McDonald’s – How Big Is It?

Quick question: Which private company employs the most people on this planet? Is it Microsoft? Walmart? McDonald’s? Make a guess! Take a few seconds if you need… If your answer is McDonald’s, congratulations, you are wrong! It is Walmart. McDonald’s is actually the second biggest employer in the world. Hold on the judgment till you see the numbers!

Thank you for stumbling upon How Big Are They and today, we are going to see just how big McDonald’s really is! Trust me, you’re gonna be lovin’ it!

As the 6th most valuable brand in the world, there is no denying that McDonald’s is the undisputed champion of the restaurant industry, followed “closely” by Starbucks, which is trailing ‘only’ 46 places behind at 52. Talk about competition!

This competition, or lack of, means McDonald’s rakes in some serious cash. How much? Hold your breath! Every hour, we humans, collectively spend more than $3 million buying fries and Big Mac. That’s roughly $72 million a day which provides a profit of $13.2 million every 24 hours. Coincidentally, their entire workforce manages only 13.3 million smiles a day. “Would you like some smiles with that?” If only!

What do they do with all this money? For starters, they employ tons of people. McDonald’s employs close to 1.9 million people. As a matter of fact, if there was a country with only their employees, it would be more populated than 48 countries in the world. You see, sometimes being second best isn’t too bad either.

Wondering where do these millions of people work? Well, they have more than 36,000 restaurants in more than 119 countries to work in. God forbid but if you ever get sick in the United States, chances are that you will find the iconic Golden Arches before you reach a hospital. 14,350 McDonald’s vs 10,660 hospitals in the US, to be precise. And although there will be less new franchises in 2016, still, a new restaurant opens every 14.5 hours.

The more the restaurants, the more people who eat. They sell 75 hamburgers every single second. Just in one week, they sell 45,360,000 hamburgers. McDonald’s had sold more than 99 billion hamburgers by the end of 1994, after which they stopped keeping count. 69 million people eat at McDonald’s every single day. That’s more than the population of the entire United Kingdom. McDonald’s feeds close to 1% of the population every day. Let that sink in.

I went into a McDonald’s yesterday and said, ‘I’d like some fries.’ The girl at the counter said, ‘Would you like some fries with that?’

If you have read so far then by now you know just how big McDonald’s is. So, would you be interested in taking up Masters in Hamburgerology? “Sorry? Hamburgerowhat?” Exactly! You see, they take consistency very seriously. And to maintain that, McDonald’sHamburger University was established in 1961 to train its executive employees. More than 275,000 executives have graduated in Hamburgerology to date. To put it in perspective, Harvard University has 271,000 living alumni in the United States.

Over 36,000 restaurants, 69 million people eating each day, 1.9 million employees… In all seriousness, even I was surprised at some of these facts while I was preparing this post. What fact astonished you the most? Let me know in the comments below. If you learnt something new today, why not McShare it with your friends? I hope I could help you see just how big McDonald’s is.